


- Raise a Glass -

by Aliiya258



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Gen, So much angst, and I'm so so sorry, it's angst guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 13:13:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9236663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aliiya258/pseuds/Aliiya258
Summary: Hercules Mulligan learns how it feels to be the last of the Revolutionary Set





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this over a year ago and posted it to tumblr, and now I'm uploading it here. Inspired by a anon ask received by dorothywonderland on tumblr.

The bell above the door had been wrapped to muffle its usually cheerful chiming. Outside, church bells across the city mirrored the subdued song, as sounds of hushed voices and ratting carts sloshed through the muck dredged up in the streets from the latest rain. The intermittent gasps of those learning the news spread across the city, one house then another, men and women alike all whispering and wailing as they heard of what had occurred.

For now, as he closed the door behind him, he was surrounded by quiet, so, so much quiet, and Hercules Mulligan was glad for it. He nodded to the proprietor of the tavern, grateful for these doors remaining open on such a day. Without a word, a pint of Sam Adams was placed at Mulligan’s table, free of charge yet followed by mumbled condolences. He nodded at these too, but did nothing to mask the grimace that settled across his face. He was not the one who needed condoling, and yet all at once, he very much was.

“Knocked down and I get the fuck back up again, huh?” Mulligan whispered as he took up the mug of frothing beer. He saw nothing in it, only remembering everything that had been the cacophony of these last— _his friend’s_ last—few hours. “Right…”

He downed the glass in one go. If there were eyes on him, he did not notice. Or better stated, he did not care. On this night, he was _going_ to forget.

* * *

The announcement had come early last morning, before the daily water delivery and after his morning meal. Mulligan, absently fumbling with his keys as he hummed to himself, was on his way to opening his haberdashery when he noticed a larger than normal crowd clustered about the community bulletins. In recent days, rumors of a Yellow Fever outbreak drifted in from Philadelphia, and many had worried it would make its way to New York. The heavy rains and stagnant puddles only increased public fears, but upon his approach, Hercules felt that to be false reasoning for the commotion. 

He thought, maybe someone’s making an announcement, and his mind flashed to a time long past: of himself as a younger man in days filled with ambitious rebels drunkenly swearing their lives to a country not yet fully formed. An odd chill ran through him for such a muggy summer day as he made his way closer, wiping away sweat that gathered at his graying temples. Another flash: days goading on a friend—a brother—to artfully refute the proclamations of a British loyalist spouting nonsense in the city square.

He hadn’t thought of those moments in years. Why recall them now when there was no reason for such—“GENERAL HAMILTON WAS SHOT BY COLONEL AARON BURR THIS MORNING IN A DUEL. THE GENERAL IS SAID TO BE MORTALLY WOUNDED.”

Hercules Mulligan stood there in a shock, reading the words over again. Again. And again. And once more. Then before he’d registered anything else, he dropped his keys, and ran. The general had been taken to a house only blocks away where he was immediately allowed entrance. Taken to the second floor, Mulligan stood bracing himself in the doorway, breathless and powerless to do much else but stare in bewilderment. 

Hamilton lay in a low bed at the center of the room, the sheets and gauze stained red by his own life’s blood that had begun to leak on the floorboards beneath. His breathing remained shallow and strained, Eliza mirroring him in her gasping prayers and pleas for his survival. Beside her and around, kneeling and standing and watching with mixed horror and heartbreak, were Hamilton’s seven remaining children. His direct namesake, Alexander Hamilton Jr., aged only eighteen years, stood at the foot of the bed, eyes wide and brimming with a troubled mortality. He looked a man presented with the ghost of his brother’s death, the encroachment of his father’s, and the imminence of his own, all at once. His voiceless mouth hung agape in a cry far too mournful to emit. 

The rest of his children fared no better for Alexander Hamilton was surely dying.

You could see it in the peculiar calm of the general’s eyes whenever he spoke to his weeping wife, or stroked the cheeks of his sobbing little ones. It was felt in the miasma of despair that filled the room and kept Mulligan rooted at the threshold, breath regained but gone all the same. If he stepped forward, if he stepped into this room, this was a reality he would have to admit, would have to accept it in its most gruesome form. 

Hercules didn’t think he could do it alone…

Next to him, the floors creaked as Angelica Schuyler Church gently placed a hand on his arm. Her usually bright and gallant smile was clouded and dark with fatigue, the corners of her mouth not quite reaching their full apex. It was surreal to see her so troubled, lacking sleep, her focus jumping from point to point on Mulligan’s face, though never settling unless the look was severely cast with a heavy gloom. Her voluminous hair, which usually gave her an air of unbridled, girlish charm, had long been pulled back into a frizzing tail, falling thick and unkempt down her back from distressed fidgeting.

Mulligan tried to ease her worries by returning her smile, but he knew as did she, that while the effort was much appreciated on both sides, their strength was too fragile to pursue full cheer. With all the compassion she could muster, Angelica removed his hands from the doorway, removed each finger one by one. His fingernails had left claw marks in the soft wood. He watched this distantly, and noted the pause she took as each fingernail came dislodged, as if saying _He needs his family now, alright?_ She took his large hands into her smaller ones, gave them a reassuring squeeze. He felt in them a tiny tremor of her own, and he rubbed his thumbs over the back of her hands in mute answer: _None of this will ever be alright…_

Then slowly, Angelica took a small half-step back, and Mulligan’s heart sank hard. He stared at her, shaking his head once, almost imperceptibly, panic-stricken and unprepared. As he stared at her, his vision wavered.

What was…were these really …Tears?

No. These _weren’t_ tears in his eyes because these _couldn’t_ be tears, because this wasn’t _actually_ happening, because he had just _spoken_ to Hamilton days ago when he’d stepped into the ‘dashery, because there hadn’t been even a _hint_ of this duel in Hamilton’s demeanor when they had made _plans_ to—

Angelica took another step back, further leading him into the room. Mulligan blinked, numb, still gripping her hands. And the tears spilled forth, running silently down his cheeks as he looked over her shoulder at his friend, his _brother_. He was talking, softly and with difficulty in comforting tones to his wife and children. But at least he was talking. Hercules bowed his head for only a moment, felt Angelica give his hands another squeeze. Then he breathed in deep, gathered up the courage to meet Angelica’s eyes, and slowly took a step forward.

* * *

Mulligan sat with his face towards the door, already nursing his third pint for the evening as Eliza's broken sobs still rang loud in his ears. He had a eulogy to prepare, a procession to plan, a friend to bury.

So, he drank.

He drank to drown out the overbearing hush that fell during Hamilton's last few minutes. He drank to ebb away the twist in his gut at the sight of Eliza being held up by her sister. Her four-year old daughter, Elizabeth Holly, clung confused to her skirts while one of the boys tried to collect her, and collect himself as well. He drank to numb the senselessness of a death so premature, and the guilt of not being able to stop it. 

He drank until he couldn’t halt the decades-old memories from descending to the forefront. 

At this very table he remembered that night, _the_ night that hummed with relentless fervor, where one after the other, four young men climbed upon the tabletop and professed loud and clear who they were, why they were, and exactly what the stood for. Hercules found himself in the exact spot he'd been all those years ago when he was left marveling at this magnificent magnet of a kid who could whip himself up into such a frenzy of oratory genius, it left entire crowds speechless. Mulligan always imagined him...never actually dying.

He swallowed hard, finishing off the rest of the glass. It tasted thin in his mouth, the hops and whatever the hell else that was in it not taking nearly as much effect as he’d like. Instead of drowning things out, it brought back an endless cycle of memories, once savory, now turned bittersweet.

It brought back a tune.

"Raise a glass to freedom...something you will never feel again."

_Laurens…_

Mulligan craved his presence, John’s soft voice that could also climb to a crescendo when passionate, or his shoulder, while slight, that could offer so much warm support. By now he thought would have come to terms with the fate of his friend, gone these twenty-one years, but no amount of time could act as a balm for the ache of John Laurens’ passing…

_Lafayette…_

All the way in France, too far to reach with any sort of expediency, and finally reunited with his own son. Someone has to tell him. He should be here. Lafayette’s absence was felt no stronger than it was now, for the marquis would have known what to say, known what to do. Or maybe he, too, would have felt just as helpless…

_No matter what they tell you…_

“Raise a glass to the four of us.” Tomorrow he would face the day, face the crowds. They were beginning to call for blood, looking for any reason to hunt the hiding Aaron Burr. Mulligan had no answers for them. As much as he wanted revenge for the deadly deed, this wasn’t about Burr, what he did or didn’t do. Tomorrow and the days to come would be about remembering Hamilton, the short-tempered protean creator of so many essential functions of this nation. It would be about him, the defender of the people and the land he fought so hard to make his own, and his family who stayed by his side. 

No one else. 

Mulligan chuckled despite himself. There’d be more remembering. Of course. From aiding Washington to Monmouth, Valley Forge to Yorktown, The Federalist Papers, and his so-very-like-him six-hour long speech defending ‘freedom of the press’. A life so filled with adversity and triumph was an incredible honor to be a part of. And just think what would have become of him if there _hadn’t_ been that hurricane.

The bell above the tavern door chimed again its muffled song, and Mulligan was snapped back to the now. None of Mulligan’s remembering did anything to change the fact that, all around him, there was nothing but empty chairs. “There’ll never be more of us.”

"They’ll tell the story of tonight.” Mulligan’s song had changed to a growl, slow and low, though it came out barely above the shocked news that swept through the tavern, swept across the city, and now swept through this nation: General Hamilton is no more.

“…I need another round.”


End file.
